
Telecommunication in Canada
The development of telecommunications in Canada is roughly equivalent to the average of the European Union. Under the country code +1, there were a total of 45.70 million connections in 2020. Among them were 32.36 million mobile phones, which corresponds to an average of 0.85 per person. In the EU, this figure is 1.2 mobile phones per person.With about 8.74 million webhosts, Canada is below the world's average by population. At the end of 2020, 1.52 million million of these, or about 17 percent, were secured with SSL or comparable encryption.
Back to overview: Canada
Development of telephone and internet connections
With an average download speed of 106.82 Mbit/second for fixed-network broadband internet, Canada ranked 20th in an international comparison. The upload rate of only 22.61 Mbit/second was significantly lower (69th place). The quality of the Internet, consisting of signal fluctuations (jitter) and latency, is very far ahead at 5th place.In mobile internet, i.e. on tablets and smartphones, Canada comes 17th with a download speed of 71.46 Mbit/second. The upload speed of around 9 Mbit was only enough for 88th place.
The Speedtest Global Index published regularly by Ookla is based on several million individual measurements in April 2022 from 181 countries.
The following diagrams show the development of the various telephone and Internet connections as a percentage of the country's population. Values above 100% mean that, on average, every inhabitant has more than one connection.
Access to the Internet in Canada from 1990 - 2020
Broadband internet in Canada 1998 - 2020

Landlines 1990 - 2020
Mobile phones 1990 - 2020
Distribution in 2020 | Canada Total | Canada percent | EU Total | EU percent |
---|---|---|---|---|
Internet users | 36.85 m | 96.97 % | 379.48 m | 84.74 % |
Broadband users | 15.83 m | 41.64 % | 163.72 m | 36.56 % |
Landlines | 13.34 m | 35.10 % | 160.15 m | 35.76 % |
Mobile cellulars | 32.36 m | 85.15 % | 540.56 m | 120.71 % |